


our watercolors, and our poems.

by burusume



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, Yugotalia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 06:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15212747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burusume/pseuds/burusume
Summary: Jalal and Ștefan get to talk more during a grandpa-styled trip their brothers dragged them along to.





	our watercolors, and our poems.

**Author's Note:**

> The following is a KosMol fic written in a BROTP fashion. They’re both around 16 in appearance, following my headcanon. One and only warning: mentions of injuries and war towards the end, with no political implications, though.

_           School _

 

          The hotel’s walls are quiet, but the people inside and outside of them are noisy, and the old TV’s now on a mainstream news channel, after being tortured with a switching of music channels every 36 seconds. Jalal and Ștefan are on a double-brothers trip, so, their companions are Mihai and Vuk. It’s actually pretty relaxing, but also engaging, as Mihai surprisingly knows his way around Romanian counties beside Ilfov or the Municipality of Bucharest. This summer they traded the boiled corn eaten on the beach in Mamaia for getting blisters from sandals around elderly and families-filled thermal stations. They  _ do  _ fit the criteria: each one has been experiencing terrible back pains as of lately.

 

Jalal’s mouth hasn’t been like that active in a while, as you can’t stop  _ The _ Mišić when it’s  _ Story Of How I Completely Fixed A Crashed Car _ time, and it’s missed it, it’d talk even during their frugal dinner. Even while eating a banana.

 

“And how’s school there?” 

 

“Hm, just like...in any other place.” Ștefan takes a huge bite out of an apple. “Wghy do yhou agsk?”

 

“I mean, for  _ you _ , how’s it, I don’t care how many classes of History you’ve got a week or if your teacher is ba—

 

“It’s alright, all of it. Like, I’m in 10th grade and —”

 

“Me too! How you like it?” Jalal smiles to the second banana instead of Ștefan.

 

“Uh, how I...yeah, I like it. It’s interesting.”

 

“When did you have exams for entering high school? I guess 10th grade is high school. Wait, is it?”

 

“It...is. I had those exams last year, gymnasi–middle school in Moldova ends with 9th grade.” No matter how much English Ștef’s picked up from online, Romanising it always gets him. And no matter how much internet slang’s creeped under his scalp, he hasn’t used it in any real life conversation. 

 

“Same for Kosovo, so what?”

 

“What?” 

 

“Why did you tell me that too, with when middle school ends in Moldova?”

 

“Middle school ends with 8th grade in Romania and I just remembered that.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Jalal gulfs the banana down, and as soon as he’s K.O.-ed this enemy, starts to unpeel the small triangles of cheese of their wrapping. Ștefan  _ feels _ that he should tell him, ask him, what should he even do, for him to slow down. But, how would he come off the best to the other?

 

“I’m like...like just by myself in my class,” Ștefan starts twirling a lock of hair around his finger. It’s an awkward topic to discuss, but, he’s chosen it himself.

 

“Ha?”

 

“Um, well, I...mostly sit by myself and don’t really talk with my classmates..”

 

“I’m pretty sure a lot of students do that, actually.” Jalal bites into the cheese with a streetsmart air, “I mean you can’t talk with them all the time, get what I’m saying? Like...yeah.”

 

“Yeah, I know.” 

 

Jalal feels pressed between two doors now, so, Ștef to the rescue with a question.

 

And everything turns into a comfortable mush of sharing, and venting out frustration for about only one of them experienced, but the other knows how it feels  _ perfectly. _

 

 

  
_           Jobs! _

 

          Băile Herculane is one nifty thermal station of a city: you can have a pizza at some local pubbo-restaurant, you can soak yourself in a public swimming pool. You can go hiking on unauthorised paths, you can hear snakes hissing. Now it’s walk around a little joyful stream time while your older brother oogles beach towels with skimpy-dressed chicks and swimming glasses together with the other one’s older brother. 

 

“Well,” Ștefan scurries through his hair, it’s really a motor tic by now, “I work in a textiles fabri–factory, yeah, I...sew together stuff.”

 

“Wha–that, that must be pretty rough…”

 

“It’s not, really, why  _ would _ it be?”

 

“Sitting in just one place for countless hours and just,” Jalal slams his hands in the air as on a desk, “ _ having _ to pay attention to everything you do.”

 

Ștef laughs, “Aren’t all jobs like that, though? I mean, sure, it depends, but, really…”

 

“I’m living off Gov allowance and as a counsellor in some huge-ass constructions store.”

 

“Gov–ah, government. Oh, but that sounds pretty good, why are you complaining?”

 

“I don’t know…’am bored by it.” Jal exhaled more dramatically than intended. “To death.”

 

“But you can, you can get some pretty strong biceps at least!”

 

“They don’t let me carry heavy stuff. I don’t look 18 yet, they barely hired me anyway.”

 

“Hm, I see.” Ștefan locks his gaze on a dead spot in the sky, “Then, what if you’d continue your studies and land off in a...job that you’d like? Better than your current one, I mean.”

 

“God, believe me, I wanna study architecture.”

 

“Architecture? That’s...wow, that’s really good!” Ștefan’s beaming tone surprises the other, “Anca’s working as an architect too.”

 

“I know—well, not the part about your sister. Just a few more years and you’ll be coming to my studio to get yourself a new housey-house,” he hangs his arms behind his neck.

 

“Ah, but, I hope you know what an architect does and what a builder does.”

 

“Hm? Course I do.”

 

“Alright.”

 

Ștefan has a golden hand when it comes to watercolors: Jalal finds this endearing. Does he want to study anything the like? He’s got a creative mind, Jal knows it, because he’s kept the smiling children this slender, messy-headed and with some eyes he could express more with Moldavian boy drew for him. So Ștefan  _ was _ right in stuffing those seemingly useless things, watercolours and brushes, in his luggage too!

 

“Are you gonna follow something related to arts later?” Jalal skips a black stone in his path.

 

“Me? No...I don’t think so.”

“Why not? You’re pretty talented–actually, no, sorry, you’re  _ really _ talented. And creative. You’ve got imagination, and since your art style’s inspired by those old Soviet era illustrations, you could turn out to be very popular.”

 

“Thanks, but…” Ștefan’s steps come to a halt, he kneels down and starts looking for a flat stone, “I don’t know, I want to do something else. I have no idea why, but, yeah, I just know I do, you know? Maybe…” the teen weighs a cream stone in his hand, getting up, ”something with people, but, actively helping them. Doing something for them.” Ștefan says as he swiftly throws the pebble in the water. It made no less than six quick, small jumps on the surface.

 

“A teacher, maybe? Like, your brother? Did I get it right…?”

 

“You did, don’t worry,” Ștefan chuckles for the uptenth time; he’s lighting up. “But, I don’t know how to explain it, I want to do something...more, with people.”

 

“Special teacher? Like for kids with special needs.”

 

“Yeah...anyways.”

 

Jalal pins his bangs again, carefully. Vuk talked it out with him, but it still feels weird, not having them cover his right eye. Ștefan briefly commented, upon catching him fix the pins, that he looked so light with his hair out of his face. But it still feels weird.

 

“Hey, we could...I could draw in my free time, and you can write. But we wouldn’t have to show anyone else our works—I don’t mean we wouldn’t be allowed to do that—just, us. I draw for you, you write, um, you don’t have to write for me or to me specifically, erm.”

 

Jalal seems confused.

 

“Geez, I bet this sounded like some some...shady Russian Mafia deal.”

 

“Oh, I’d like to think of it as that: deal, Ștefan, deal.”

  
  
  


 

_           The Right Eye _

 

          Ștefan’s hormones started to make their presence known in the late 50’s: he first noticed it when his hair grew up more messy than before the zero cut. He couldn’t part it anymore, his bangs went out the window, but at least those two strands that always arched up were less visible now. Great, no pigtails anymore: those new era hair ties would’ve made him look like an elementary girl.

 

Ștefan thought that it was actually him, and not someone else (from his immediate family, even), that could take the title of  _ Man of Contrasts _ . He always spoke in that precipitated, yet gentle and joyful tone. He was both the most emotional and insensitive person, even in similar situations. Inclined towards self-seclusion, he’s thought that only he took a liking to psychological  _ horror _ out of any other nation. That only he went and got himself a probably fourth hand guitar so he could both rock like those stars he’s heard on vinyl disks but also to sing to children in kindergartens, if anyone would allow him to.

 

But Jalal took up guitar too. And he’s wanted to do pretty much the same stuff with it, too: the only exception was that maybe, his guitar was just a  _ second _ hand. Got it from a trusted man during untrusting times.

 

At least Ștefan got it right that this samurai-hair styled boy’s room was full of posters and that his 20 years old CD player was giving its last dying breaths every time it was playing  _ Gangsta’s Paradise _ or  _ Killing Me Softly _ . Mihai got himself a pretty cheap, portable speaker, maybe he should get Jalal one too. They’ll be stopping in some big cities, why wait ‘till his birthday?

 

“I never,” Ștefan takes another hard candy in his mouth, “would’ve thought you will enjoy The Motans.”

 

“They be hitting that cord in my soul I wish didn’t exist—hey, hold on a sec, just how many candies do you have in your mouth now?!”

 

Ștef laughs with gusto, raining some drool on the blue blanket under them, “Just four.”

 

“You’re gonna get diabetes one day.”

 

“Can I? I mean, we  _ could? _ ”

 

“Yeah, Alfred’s got it,” Jalal warns him in a too soft of a cautionary tone.

 

“What, for real? But, diabetes is very much stress-based too so, it could be that more than popping candies in your mouth.”

 

“Doesn’t matter, I’m telling you he’s got it and I don’t see you that well..”

 

“Need glasses?” Ștefan’s always had it for either dry or incredibly off-putting jokes, “Or to move your bangs a bit?”

 

Jalal seizes up and serves him an unreadable expression. Ștefan knows he went too far and can’t find a way to pull himself out of this shit now.

 

“Um, I’m...sorry for having said that. I—”

 

“Ah, nah, it’s okay. I just recalled some stuff.”

 

Ștefan raises his eyes weakly, and he can only assume it was bad stuff Jalal recalled.

 

“What...kind of stuff?”

 

“Back from war times,” Jalal draps a strand of hair behind his ear, “related to my right eye.”

 

He’s never let his mouth go off so casually when reminiscing about what happened 20 years ago; it was always strained talk, he thought he had to talk of it formally, in a clean manner. Is he so casual now because Ștefan seems to have around the same level of maturity as he does? Does he find it easier to accept that he’s probably going to break down even if he’ll try to keep a neutral, maybe even light tone to his story?

 

“Do you...you wanna hear the story?”

 

“Of what?”

 

“Well, of,” Jalal crunches down the candy, “ya ever noticed anything special about my right eye? Right side of face?”

 

“Mm, no, but,”  Ștefan skimmies closer to the other, “maybe I can, now?”

 

Jalal’s hands are in his hair again.

 

“Too late?”

 

“No, I was pulling it back up again so you could see better.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Ștefan narrows his eyes; it’s instinctual so he wouldn’t oogle like an owl in Jalal’s pores. He does feel that something is indeed wrong with his right eye, but he can’t quite put his finger on  _ what _ . He zooms in, he zooms out and then in again on it and Jalal’s entire face, making the other chuckle, hardly stopping himself from telling away what the difference is. Finally, Ștefan  _ notices  _ it.

 

“Your right eye...has more gold in it—I mean a more golden colour. Is it this…?”

 

“Yeah,” Jalal draps a loose strand of hair behind his ear, “got shot.”

 

“W‒what?!”

 

Jalal widens his eyes the moment Ștefan jumps back. His mouth did the job without permission from my brain, again.

 

“Uh, yeah. Guerilla war-styled, if I recall it correctly,” Jalal’s pace quickens, “and so it somehow got more amber than green like this other one and the scar under it ’s related.”

 

“So I saw it right.”

 

There’s shuffling of the blanket in attempt of smoothing it over, from both sides. Both sides are too quiet.

 

“But I’m growing it out.”

 

“The bangs?”

 

“The...memories. Growing out of them, yeah. The bangs too, actually.”

 

“Well, that’s...good. Do you have any complexes about it?”

 

Ștefan realizes this was a stupid question, but nonetheless, Jalal’s mood is still calm.

 

“Yeah, but, both Vuk and Milica say it’s not obvious because it’s so...on the side of my face, see?” Jalal leans over to show off his scar again, as the other boy didn’t analyse it enough these past few days on his own. “And Vuk thinks my eyes are really beautiful like this and shit.”

 

“I think so too, like, it’s not...it’s not obvious. It all comes together naturally...” Ștefan mutters, head low, “...don’t know how to explain it, sorry.”

 

“It okay. If you think so too, then, it okay,” Jalal finishes in a slightly sillier voice. 

 

The playlist Ștefan started playing more than half an hour ago booms out a high chorus of Carla’s Dreams, and Jalal comments, while subtly kidnapping the last hard candy from its package, that he likes this singer’s accent, but can they play The Motans again?

 


End file.
